Sainsbury’s: a campaign to raise money for schools and the environment

Welcome to case study 2 of the series. I'm Roddy Mullin, a business consultant helping retail firms, the professions, government bodies and charities make money since 1987. I'm both a chartered marketer and a chartered engineer. I'm also an author of marketing and sales books since 1999. See the last but one slide for a list of my books.

This case study illustrates how a supermarket engaged with schools, schoolchildren and their parents using a "need to reuse carrier bags" environmental issue, rather than for them to use a new bag, or bags, each time they shopped. Customers arrived at the checkout with bags they had used before, and a voucher was handed to them for each carrier bag they showed. This case study is a multi-purpose solution to achieve a number of promotional objectives, as well as achieve a cost-saving objective, reducing the cost of providing single-use carrier bags. All based on a matter of then-current public concern, the environmental cost of throwing away plastic bags which end up as landfill. At that time, supermarkets provided carrier bags free.

Case studies illustrate ideas and success, pitfalls or failure of marketing, advertising and sales. Case studies show that campaigns can be successful, both in the real and virtual world, describing projects that cost a fortune or next to nothing, whether using billboards, created events, or online through social media, et cetera. I have examples of all of them in my books. The key point about case studies is that you can learn rapidly from hearing, reading, viewing, and visualising how success was achieved. You also learn from their failures where the pitfalls are in order to avoid those. Remember, success is getting customers to buy, or clients smiling, as their aims are achieved through your swift response with a solution. The book Value for Money Marketing describes how to measure marketing, sales, or advertising success.